Keynote Speakers

Thursday, Feb. 19

Kim Barnas has an M.S. in healthcare administration and served as a senior vice president of ThedaCare and president of Appleton Medical Center and Theda Clark Medical Center. Barnas has enjoyed the opportunities provided by ThedaCare as they have been on their lean journey for the past nine years. The ThedaCare Improvement System (LEAN) path started with value stream mapping followed by improvement events and projects. She was involved in leading two of the initial value streams for Obstetrics and Cancer Services.

As the journey continued, a new challenge emerged – the need for a systematic method to sustain improvement, clarify daily continuous improvement opportunities and deliver on strategic deployment. To meet this need, Barnas and her team led the development of a lean management system designed to deliver improved performance through a predictable process that develops leaders, identifies defects, solves problems and develops people.

In 2014, Barnas wrote the book Beyond Heroes, A Lean Management System for Healthcare, based on this journey.

Friday, Feb. 20

Dr. Chuck WebsterEHR Workflow Inc.

Dr. Chuck Webster has degrees in accountancy, industrial engineering, intelligent systems and medicine. He earned his degree in medicine at the University of Chicago. Webster designed the first undergraduate program in medical informatics, was a software architect in a hospital MIS department, and also vice president and chief medical informatics officer for an EHR vendor for more than a decade. He has also helped three healthcare organizations win the HIMSS Davies Award and is a judge for the annual Workflow Management Coalition Awards for Excellence in BPM and Workflow and Awards for Case Management.